Web3 CMO Stories

Navigating Web3 Investments and Strategic Partnerships with Hatem Elsayed, COO of Advanced Blockchain AG | S4 E54

Joeri Billast & Hatem Elsayed Season 4

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Hatem Elsayed shares his journey in the blockchain space, illustrating the vital roles of community and partnerships in Web3. The episode emphasizes investing in strong teams, creating meaningful collaborations, and the evolving trends that are shaping the future of this industry.

• Exploring the significance of networking in blockchain
• Hatem's journey from ambassador to COO
• Importance of governance and community in blockchain projects
• Overview of Advanced Blockchain AG’s innovative investment strategy
• Criteria for evaluating potential investment projects
• Key factors for forming successful partnerships
• The vital role of community engagement and feedback
• Exciting narratives shaping the future of blockchain technology

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This episode was recorded through a Descript call on December 30, 2024. Read the blog article and show notes here: https://webdrie.net/navigating-web3-investments-and-strategic-partnerships-with-hatem-elsayed-coo-of-advanced-blockchain-ag/

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Hatem:

You hang around the barber shop, you get a haircut sooner or later. So you need to hang out in the places where the partner is there. You need to go to the conferences and just go and talk. Take the initiative and talk to them directly in person.

Joeri:

Welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm happy to be joined by Hatem. Hello Hatem, how are you?

Hatem:

Hello, Joeri, I'm quite good, I was looking forward to the episode, and, yeah, thank you for having me.

Joeri:

Me too, Hatem. But yeah, guys, if you don't know Hatem Elsayed, he's an angel investor and former ambassador for the Polkadot network. He previously served as a lead project manager at Advanced Blockchain AG and now leads the groups as a chief operating officer. He also masters degree in entrepreneurship and marketing from the Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany. Great to have you, Hatem. I know I came back from Egypt not so long ago. I know you have your orange in there. That was also a really good experience for me. But now I'm curious about your background, your experience, your journey, and you can start where you want to start, of course, but tell us a bit about your journey into Web3 and then your role at Advanced Blockchain AG.

Hatem:

Absolutely. Before I start with myself, maybe I can also highlight on how we met each other. So we were in a European blockchain convention in Barcelona I was actually it was a nice coincidence and we started to talk about the industry and what you are up to and the same for myself, and it was quite interesting first introduction and, yeah, we got to know each other better, and then we discussed the idea of the podcast and, yeah, as I said, happy to be here. Starting about myself, maybe I could also could start with how it started, with blockchain in general as a technology. So it was like it all started around 2018, where I basically got to learn from a close friend about actually the technology.

Hatem:

He worked, or he used to work with parity technologies and that's the company that developed the polkadot protocol initially, and it was not really the money component, of like of the crypto side, but was rather actually like the governance side of things and how networks can be managed via DAO, like the decentralized autonomous organization, and how every single token holder can have the say in the direction of the network. You can propose ideas. You have that feeling of community. You attend events, you meet the people, you discuss things and it's not like a central entity of management managing the network. If I talk about, for example, facebook, it's not to criticize, it's a different model, but they're like users do not really have a lot to say. Data is being used, data is being sold to third parties, and then users do not have the say or even earn a profit from the the data that is being sold to other parties. So that's was more or less like the main reason that made me very interested in the technology and so I became a member of the or a participant of the, and then, later on, became an ambassador organized for the Polkadot network.

Hatem:

Like the first Polkadot, decoded side events in Dubai, which was funded by the treasury of the network, and then, in parallel, lost the money from investing in tokens in the market, which is, I think, other investors also do. And I like the path of basically doing the due diligence of the projects what are the aim to build and what's their vision and everything around, like ventures, new ventures that are building a product or working on a project, and, yeah, started basically investing in early stage projects before they go to the mainnet, launch and launch a token. So basically early stage. And as for advanced blockchain. As you briefly highlighted, I joined the company as a lead project manager and we're supporting actually on many topics, so I was working on research, marketing, project management, also operations to business development, so I was part of like areas of the business and, starting from august 2024, I've been basically leading the group's operations and the different activities of the company with my colleague, mike lusker, who's the cfo of the group. Let's briefly about myself.

Joeri:

Yeah, you mentioned that advanced blockchain.

Hatem:

yeah, I think. Meaning, before I go into, like, the specifics of the company, it's advanced blockchain and maybe I can do a brief introduction about the company. So it's like the first public holistic company in Germany. It was to basically focus on blockchain development and investments. It was established in 2017. And since then, the company also participated in accelerated programs with other partners to help entrepreneurs to achieve and enable them basically to achieve their vision, and also our regular businesses, mainly investments in early stage projects.

Hatem:

So the company, as I mentioned, has been historically quite heavily involved in research and incubation of projects, like for projects such as like Peak, composable Finance, panoptic, quasar, among others. These are projects that are operating in different verticals. So Composable Finance, it's the DeFi, decentralized Finance. Peak, on the other hand, is in the decentralized physical infrastructure networks like deepen, like how we innovate or how we basically helped building these companies. We have our own strong research team that is analyzing the market, seeing the trends, driving basically projections and also you can. So basically you can consider the company also as a one-stop solution for everything. We check specific narratives that we have a high convention of conviction of and we then basically have in our network. We see if there are teams that are basically building some like protocols or building something in these verticals, and we like connect and we see, like what is the vision we understand more about, like the vision, what's the team wants to achieve, if and we check really different things there is no really like a, I would say, a protocol of how we do it, but we, as I mentioned, it's like a one-stop solution for everything like related to chain, blockchain development and investments, and historically this has been the way. Like that, we have our own research team, derive things, derive ideas, build or create and develop the ideas and then we find the right people. Either it's team that exists already that have been advancing, or we actually make the project by ourselves, like by our own developers and everything. Just to say, the company has been involved heavily in incubations in the past. Right now, we are more doing a lot of like investments and with a very sharpened scope on incubations and when it comes to innovation, or like incubations and investments.

Hatem:

And when I talk about investments, it's basically supporting entrepreneurs indirectly to innovate, because you drive or you give them the means. Either it's like financial means, or rather like a consultancy, or just be a partner for them. Initially, when we invest, we look at three different things. First of all, you invest in people. It's not only financials. We have people that you invest in and if you believe and see that these people have a strong track record, they are really driven, they have a very strong vision, they share the same values.

Hatem:

Of course, you will not be able to see this from only one quick meeting, but you can also have a feeling of these things, of how the people actually work together. And then, after the team, it's basically you check the technology, you check the use case. You also ask does actually the use case make sense? Is this is a product that is really needed in the market right now, aside from our projections for the future? And you also ask, like, how can you actually support them? Because I think this is just that, from my opinion, it's a wrong misconception. Is that investors just invest. There are investors that do that, but we do it differently. We invest and we actually support them in this journey by by the different means that we have, either it's know-how and connections, like to do introductions to other investors, to the introductions to other potential partners. So that's how we prefer, like to do it we. We don't want to be only an investor, but rather a long-term partner.

Joeri:

Yeah, I love that. And actually in Barcelona there was a panel and they were speaking about investments and you mentioned it already. One of the criteria that it's looked at is the personal brands of the founders. Who are those people and do they already have a network? Are they already known in those people and do they already you know, do they already have a network? Are they already known in the space, and so on? So I guess that's also what you mentioned that it's important. And, of course, how are they working together? Who is in the team? Yeah, it all makes sense.

Hatem:

I wanted to say and also like the backgrounds, if they really, if you have, let's say, an example, if you have, like a company developing a like a defi protocol that requires, like a block blockchain developer, like full stack developer, and then you don't have really that you have the blockchain developer but you don't have the full stack developer. And then, like, this is one area where, like, you could ask, okay, do you guys like, how do you plan to to actually use the funds that you would get? And if you see this gap and then if you ask and you don't get an answer for example, that they don't like really plan to onboard the right people who have the right, like technical skills to actually develop that product then you would maybe rather question yourself one more time if this makes sense or not. So, working together and having the right know-how is quite important component of like in analyzing and just checking opportunities.

Joeri:

Absolutely. Team is important, having the right people on the team, the right leaders. Of course, there needs to be a need for the solution of the product that is being developed. I already understand collaborations are important. Partnerships, yeah. What is your vision about that? What is the advice that you give around partnerships?

Hatem:

I would say, like when it comes to partnerships, for me personally, the most important thing is that you have a shared vision and values alignment, that you share the same vision and values on working on related to the project and the initiative that you are working on. Because if you don't have this alignment, then you would reach a position where, basically, you could have like all promises and you're not delivering on expectations of the other part. So you need to define, you need to check this If it exists. You need to also have a clear goals together. You need to also have a long-term commitment and you will know that, of course, if you are like checking checking out, like approaching a partner and then from people how people who worked with them in the past, the reputation and many other components, you would actually define or get to know if if that's the right partner for you or not. But once you have this clear goals, vision and then that at least have a sense of if there would be a commitment on the other side, then you can actually think of starting to initiate, like to close, or to initiate like the partnership, and see if this is feasible or not. There are many strategies actually to execute here, and but it really all depends on how your approach, the approach of the individual company or individual. I think one thing that was that I personally saw, which I don't think it's really ideal, is that you have people who talk only about partnerships, only like with let's partner, let's, let's really do partnerships together, but on things. That really does not make sense. It just because of the reason like there should be like partnership and and you should start really from the basics, then does it really make sense. What do you really can contribute with? And what I can contribute with, what is the really the added value there that we bring together? So it goes to really essential and basic stuff. Yeah, and that would be really my.

Hatem:

If it comes to advice, I don't know you will find this strange, actually, that I am usually not the person who likes to give advices, but rather give my opinion. My opinion there is that you really know, like, what you really want to achieve from this partnership and define really a vision, that something that you are working on, define clear goals and then when you approach like a partner that you want to work with is actually you can see if there is like, uh, if there is an alignment there with with the goals that you want to achieve in the vision that you have. It's basically a reflection of what I've said earlier. So, yeah, it should have this, should have a commonality of of vision or values and ending goals that you want to achieve.

Hatem:

If it comes to approach how you could approach this, I would rather, if you have the network, then you can ask in your network people who can introduce you to the right partner or the partner that you want to approach, if you don't have the network to make you the introduction. I always have this in mind from Denzel Washington. He says he was saying one time you hang around the barber shop, you get a haircut sooner or later. So you need to hang out in the places where the partner is there. You need to go to the conferences where the partner is basically there and just go and talk, take the initiative and talk to them directly in person.

Joeri:

Absolutely. That's also how we met. It makes total sense that you start with your vision, with your goals, but I get you cannot imagine how many messages that I receive when people just want to collaborate, or maybe if they know how to sell something, they want to collaborate. But it's based on what? Like you said, if you have your goals and then you see who are the right partners, so that it's from both sides a win, of course. And yeah, by going to these conferences, chances are higher.

Hatem:

Yeah, and I can also reflect briefly on one situation in the past I had. It was when I was an ambassador of Polkadot Network. I got introduced to a company without really mentioning the name and what they wanted to do. They wanted to do a partnership with polkadot and in general as an ambassador you can propose it but you don't have the final say, like if that reading pass or not. But they just wanted to have a partnership for marketing purposes, so that they can just put it this company collaborated with spot cut of them and that's it, which does not make sense and I did not even try to help there because it just does not make sense.

Joeri:

W ho can help me with some partnerships? Now, another, another thing that's and certainly Web3 is really important that's about community a community for your marketing, but also to get feedback about a product you're developing, and so on. I'd love to get not your advice, but your opinion, Hatem, about how a community is useful for companies, for builders in the space, if it's like you're talking.

Hatem:

We were talking now about Web3 and blockchain. It's the core of it. Like, blockchain, projects are based on communities because these are actually the early adapters of what is being built, more or less. I think there has to be a certain level of authenticity and just value driven from value generated for the community members to actually be their existing. Aside, of course, you have people who participate in early in projects by. You have these gamification strategies. You have participants finishing specific tasks to basically earn a little of the project.

Hatem:

But aside from that, there is like the feeling of community, the feeling of driving value, of being there. This was one of the things that I liked early in the days about the Polkadot ecosystem that it was like quite active. You have people who want to drive things, who want to learn from each other, and this is one of the things that really like there was a value value generated you can develop by actually being around such a group of people, and this was very important in my opinion and this was one of the things that made me also be part of that community in the past. So you should also find an alignment with the community members on how they can actually benefit also while being members, but also how they can make an impact by being in the community, driving very accurately.

Hatem:

I can say one example of one portfolio company. It's called Silencio and what they do is they are creating right now the world's largest noise pollution map and through your device you can share noise pollution data. You can go when you go in a restaurant, you do the check-in, you share your noise pollution data with them and then in return you get the tokens which then later on they sell and then there are different ways to reward the community members. Like the long-term, like the vision of the project itself is quite interesting. Noise pollution I would not really lie there and say this is the largest problem on earth, but rather it's becoming a problem and then people see that they have an impact but at the same time it's a nice community to be there to also earn these extra rewards, share their data, give it basically to then later all to be sold to third parties, but just having at least an impact. More or less. That at least would be my approach. But there is also no right or wrong, it's just rather different opinions.

Joeri:

Yeah, what I see is communities sometimes, if they are like hype-sensitive or that are self-doubt, people are really active in the community and then it's like nothing happens, or it seems that, or how to make sure that when you once you built your community, that it's maybe examples that you've seen how you can keep those communities active and not like dying.

Hatem:

Yeah, I think this is one of the key challenges right now. It's not to actually grow the numbers of members. It's also hard I'm not saying it's easy. It's hard to onboard users, but also it's actually harder to keep them active. So you have the new users and then you have active users and then you would know actually how, if the marketing and the marketing initiatives are working, how the community is engaging there. So having that component of seeing the active community members can be also a metric that you can look at. But it's also challenging to keep people active and it's also yeah, it's not an easy thing to have a very active community. You should have a clear strategy on how to keep them incentivized. You should be also active with different campaigns. It's not an easy job, I would say.

Joeri:

No, you need to have a plan, a strategy in place, not just by saying we need, like you said, we need a partnership or we need a community or we need to do this. But it needs to grow steadily and not just, okay, we have a community. If nothing is happening, it can be like a negative selling point. Something positive Now, a lot of things are happening these days in the markets 3D blockchain so I'm curious to hear from your standpoint what are you now personally the most excited about with everything that is going on in the world of Web3 and blockchain at the moment?

Hatem:

That's an interesting question because you can also get really different answers from different people, but my opinion there is I'm really happy about where the about the current state of the technology and the industry right now. You have the adoption. You have these large institutions that are integrating the technology and investing in general. You have, yeah, the price development, which was also quite good and positive indicator. Aside from the generic part of things, I think there are really some narratives, different narratives that will make a great impact in the next years.

Hatem:

So, as you already know, blockchains basically deoperate in silos, so there is a lack of interoperability. So the concept or topic of interoperability has been always relevant. It's not really something new what I'm saying, but once there is an also improvements of of the interoperability and then the different blockchains can communicate with each other, I think this is something that would be have. It will have an impact on adoption, and I think what would be relevant under this category is the chain abstraction. Uh, this will play a very important role in the next year. So you have concept of abstracting away from all these complexities of the individual blockchain networks and then enabling this seamless interaction across the multiples, like all the different blockchains that exist when users and developers are often faced with this fragmented ecosystem where you have different chains, you have different protocols, consensus mechanisms and then also the transaction standards, and I think this complexity already is one barrier for entry for mainstream adoption in general. Also, along the same line, like you have like user intents, I think this would be also important and it really relates to how users interact with blockchain networks at a higher level.

Hatem:

So focusing on the desired outcome rather than just the technical setup required to achieve what you really want to achieve with your end.

Hatem:

So it's like basically basing everything on the user's goal and then you can and what I mean by that is, for example, you transfer assets.

Hatem:

You can then select with which smart contract you would interact, which kind of like execution layer you would select and everything there. So this will be also one thing that will make adoption grow quite good, and I think other narratives are like the Bitcoin layer two. So there are different projects right now attempting to scale the Bitcoin blockchain, basically by developing an execution layer that offers higher throughput and also more operations than the base layer of the Bitcoin network. Then all these layer tools will be basically supporting the operations, like the virtual machines of the EVM smart contracts, and then enabling funds on the Bitcoin network to be leveraged in DeFi activities, more or less. I think also the topic of deepens, which we briefly touched base on, like the decentralized physical infrastructure networks and like the machine economy, this is quite relevant for the years to come and then creating basically this better version of the web and enabling also participants of networks to monetize their data and be parts of it, and there are many more, also integrations of AI and blockchain. I think these are the things that I'm ready.

Joeri:

I would say bullish on so exciting times actually at the moment, also a good fight in the market. When we met there in Barcelona, but also at other events, I feel like a lot of things are moving out. If people they want to have a chance to meet you somewhere at the conference, or maybe they just want to find you or information about you online. Yeah, what would you like to say to my listeners?

Hatem:

Of course I mean you can share my LinkedIn account. I'm accessing my LinkedIn regularly and I think for now, that's the medium I prefer. I think for now, that's the medium I prefer. They can also communicate with the company through our dedicated email info at advancedblockchaincom. Yeah, happy to connect Great.

Joeri:

Yeah, there will be show notes every time. I will put the links in there. I know you're quite active on LinkedIn, so I think more and more people in the Web3 space are on LinkedIn. I see I'm also there most of my time my first social media channel, if you want. So, Hatem. Yeah, thanks for sharing all your opinions. It was so amazing to have you on the show.

Hatem:

Likewise Thanks for having me, Jory, and I really appreciate your time as well and, yeah, for many more to come. Wish you all the best and keep up the great work.

Joeri:

Thank you, Hatem. See you on another conference in 2025. I'm already looking forward. So, guys, if you like the episode, be sure to share the episodes with your friends, with other people in the space or people who just want to learn something new. If you're not yet following the show, this is a really good moment to do this. As I always say, if you haven't given me a review yet, this would really help me to reach an even bigger audience and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.

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